What is the best 3d program?

Amorphium is good for organic modeling (Christmas trees! Aleins!) But I don't like the UI and the fact that youy have to and sometimes can't swich between clay and other modes. I think I'll just get strata. I have seen amazing modeling done with Lightwave and amazing art done with zbrush. I might get lightwave later. Actually bryce was a hard program to learn. It had no manuel and all the features were hidden in little flippy triangles and one letter rectangles. I think bryce is better than Amorphium for organic modeling with it's symetrical whatjamacallsits.

IIRC, there's a pretty decent manual for bryce in one of the menu optionsÖ I haven't used a bryce since v3, so it might have changed in other versions. I found bryce to be a pretty poor modeller, although damn good for rendering stuff, but maybe that's just me.

Quote:Originally posted by Joseph Duchesne Amorphium is good for organic modeling (Christmas trees! Aleins!) But I don't like the UI and the fact that youy have to and sometimes can't swich between clay and other modes. I think I'll just get strata. I have seen amazing modeling done with Lightwave and amazing art done with zbrush. I might get lightwave later. Actually bryce was a hard program to learn. It had no manuel and all the features were hidden in little flippy triangles and one letter rectangles. I think bryce is better than Amorphium for organic modeling with it's symetrical whatjamacallsits.

Symetrical lattices. Yes, Bryce is hard. Have you figured out the Deep Texture Editor (do you even know how to get there?) ? When you do, call, (or email me) and I'll give you a prize for being the only person I know to completely figure out the DTE. Get the book Real World Bryce 4 by Susan A. Kitchens and Victor A. Gavenda. Even though it says Bryce 4 on the cover, there is no Bryce 5 book as good as this. Yeah, it's very thick and heavy but helpful. Annnnd, it has a CD full of stuff. Also, go to BryceTech.com and 3D Cafe.com. They have good tutorials.

DTE? Yup I found that it's the little red button (top left seacond >)in the a-b-c-d textures. It is a bit tricky to get anything from you click the top left of each rectangle (red and blue circle) and then in the top left corner of the or filter you click the type of filter you can also click the top left and bottob right dialogs then you click the top right of any of those two and you get the actuall algotithims you can choose like techno and veroni (all 15 variatons). Ouch.
:o Yes I had bryce running in the background! I'm 14 in case you want to know why I know everything about Bryce 5 (except how to really use the deep motion tracker ).

It depends on the GUI. For example, Amapi takes some time to get use to. My main beef is if they don't use standard Mac dialog, file dialogs like Amapi did, or Lightwave, etc.. I use Strata and it used Mac OS windows but sometimes you spend more time moving windows that working. Look at Zbrush. That is a GREAT GUI yet it takes the entire screen.

>How on eath did you get kicked out of their forum if you hadn't posted yet?
I joined it and just lurked. One day the mod said you are out. I think their mailing loist had a bug and thought I was someone else. Anyhow, they are the MOST strict company when it comes to their mailing list. One negative beep or question and out you go.

>did it have something to do with their mention in the article that you did about 3D programs >for the Mac?
Good question. I got tremendous kudos on that Editorial. And yes, Hash also did email me. (But this was some time after I was kicked off their list.) My editorial states that the program is a good value and has great features for character animation -- but I stick by the fact that it has always felt like a BETA program. I was a user of it since the Amiga days BTW.. Also note that the glowing rewiews of that software are done by hardcore Hash users. (a la MacAddict's man)

Ian Kerr, that is exactly the case with them. I think I would pay $600 or more for the program if they would improve the stability and support. But they go for the fast buck I think. After upgrading for $100 so many times, I thought, "I could have bought a $2000 app by now."

Susan A. Kitchens knows her stuff!

BTW... If you are running Mac OS 9, check out EI 3D Toolkit which features and old version of Electric Image. That use to sell for $2000!

Has anyone else used Vue d' Espirit 4? In terms of rendering quality it is way better(Opinion) than Strata 3D. Also, some of the new features that are in strata like caustics have been in Vue a while longer. Don't think of it as only a nature scene renderer since it does almost everything you can throw at it. In addition to being an excelent renderer it has amazing animation capabilities that are easy to use but very powerful and the price is such a bargain. It's very easy to learn and has a very good, straight forward interface. Give it a try.

Heck, Joseph, I'm your age and I don't know everything about Bryce, either. I strongly recommend Real World Bryce 4, also. The Advanced Motion Lab (that's what it's called) is sort of like LightWave and Combustion or Final Cut Pro. It's like LW's motion mixer, and Combustion's motion tracker (but you don't know what those are , so I'll stop). I'm not going to explain it considering I don't have the time nor the space for screenshots, examples, etc.

Welcome to "Find that Bryce Feature". And I'm your host, AJ Infinity. Today, we shall try to find: The display modes options. Know how to make Bryce render objects realtime? (this one's for people who say Bryce isn't realtime). Oh yeah, maybe we shouldn't mess with Kai Krause's interface like this .

And nobody can forget that Bryce is good at rendering volumetrics. LW's Hypervoxels is much better, but Bryce is easier.
Here's what I mean by objective: an object's action can influence another object's action. Like the real world physics app I want to make, Cinema 4D and Maya work in a way like this. It's slightly like this in LW, although new users don't notice it.

Camacho, I can't explain to you what I mean, but I'll try by giving an example:

In Cinema 4D:
1. Create a metaball
2. Create a particle emitter
3. Create gravity
4. Drag the metaball under the particle emitter and gravity under the metaball, in the heiarchy pane.
5. Tweak and render

Obviously, Cinema's easier than LW. I'm going to somehow get Cinema (instead of the PowerBook; the PowerBook doesn't have an academic discount) since it's now (in release 8 version w/ all modules) a high end 3D app just as powerful as LW or Maya. Annd, it looks like Maya yet it's cheaper. I find it much easier to work in Cinema than in LW (although I think LW has better IK and modelling) I wonder if scripting in Cinema is objective. Scripting in LW is procedural (like C or Basic) and it's not very easy.

After Effects and Cinema together sounds good, considering that I'm into special fx, etc. I prefer Combustion over AE, but Combustion's expensive. Anyone suprised I can do all this on a G3?

For the adventurer, the engineer or the cheapskate, you can get Meshworks and POV-Ray. Whip it up in the engineer freindly Meshworks, then Render it in POV-Ray. That'll do ya about $30. If I get some free time I'll try to make that $0 with my very-very-very pre-alpha testing stage Meshworkish modeler "MacMesh". The idea is a simple rig, and requires some programming knowledge for POV-Ray, but its cheap.

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